writing writing and more writing

The more we discuss student writing in this class, the more and more I see not only how important it is for them to write, but how important it is for us to respond to what they write. We can have them write pages and pages and while that will help, it will not be nearly as effective as us responding to what they write. I think the article by Connors and Lunsford shows how important response is, and how so many teacher seem to be lacking in this area of their job. They point out the obvious, the overworked teachers who sometimes don’t have time to respond just as our overworked students sometimes don’t have the time to write the papers we assign them, but if they can accomplish their task why can’t we? I think even worse than not responding at all were some of the horrific negative responses teachers wrote to their students. “Throw away!” or “I refuse to read this research paper.” OUCH! Talk about discouraging a writer! But while these are obviously hurtful comments can discourage writers, no response or little response is just going to create angry disconnected writers.

Where Connors and Lunsford show us the comments teachers make, Sommers helps us to be better respondants to student writing. Connors, like so many authors we have read in the past, have suggested students including writers memos as a sort of introduction to their papers. I really like this idea. I think so many times teachers write to students “what did you mean by this” or “why was this included” and maybe these questions can be addressed prior to reading the paper. What I liked even better was the predesigned questions for the memos. I think if we’re going to ask students to write a memo we should give them some direction. My favorite was “What should I try to help you with as I comment on this draft?” This helps us and the student so much! They are telling us exactly what they think needs work and ask us to concentrate on it. Although we will obviously be commenting on the entire paper, helping someone work out what they feel is their weakest part of the paper is a really good idea.